Chapter 4 - Every officer in the house froze.“What did you say?” I asked.
Sophie pointed toward the upstairs hallway.
“The man.”
Officer Harris immediately moved.
Two officers followed him.
They checked the bedrooms first.
Empty.
Then the attic.
Empty.
Then the bathroom.
Empty.
Then they opened the linen closet.
Nothing.
The house was silent.
Sophie kept staring upstairs.
“He's hiding.”
The officer crouched in front of her.
“Did you see him?”
She nodded.
“Where?”
“In the mirror.”
Officer Harris exchanged a look with the female officer.
They searched the bathroom mirror.
Nothing.
The back panel was solid.
The cabinet was empty.
Then one officer noticed something strange.
A tiny screw had been removed from the lower corner of the mirror frame.
He touched it.
The frame shifted.
Behind the mirror was a narrow cavity.
Inside sat a small plastic box.
And inside that box were more photographs.
But these were different.
They weren't of us.
They were of other families.
Other children.
Different houses.
Different cities.
All photographed secretly.
Officer Harris looked disturbed.
“How many?”
The officer counted.
Twenty-six.
Each set had a name.
Each name was written in black ink.
Sophie saw one photograph and immediately became frightened.
“That's him.”
I looked at the photo.
A man stood outside a school.
His face wasn't visible.
Only the back of his coat.
“How do you know?”
Sophie hugged herself.
“Daddy calls him Mr. Gray.”
One officer wrote the name down.
“Have you met him?”
“No.”
“Did Daddy meet him?”
Sophie nodded.
“Where?”
“In the bathroom.”
I stared at her.
The officer asked gently:
“How did Mr. Gray get into the bathroom?”
Sophie looked confused.
“He didn't.”
Silence.
“He was on the phone.”
The room changed.
Officer Harris immediately requested a forensic team.
They checked Mark's phone records.
Then his email.
Then the house internet history.
At first, nothing.
Then one technician discovered a hidden messaging application buried inside another app.
There were encrypted conversations.
No names.
Only initials.
M.
G.
A.
The newest message had been sent two days earlier.
Child almost ready. Mother suspicious.
Another followed.
Proceed Sunday.
I felt like the floor had disappeared.
“Sunday?”
Officer Harris didn't answer.
He was scrolling.
Then his expression changed.
“What?”
He turned the screen toward me.
There was a photograph attached to the message.
It showed our front door.
Taken that morning.
I looked at the timestamp.
6:03 a.m.
I had been asleep.
Someone had stood outside my house before sunrise.
And they had sent the picture to Mark.
The officer kept scrolling.
A second message appeared.
Does she know about the basement?
My heart stopped.
“The basement?”
We had a basement.
Nothing unusual.
Old boxes.
Christmas decorations.
An unused freezer.
Officer Harris turned to me.
“Was Mark ever down there alone?”
“All the time.”
“Did he keep anything locked?”
I remembered.
A steel cabinet.
I had never seen the key.
We went downstairs.
The cabinet was hidden behind a stack of boxes.
The officer used a tool to pry it open.
Inside was a duffel bag.
A burner phone.
A roll of cash.
Three passports.
And a folder containing legal documents.
The first page had my name on it.
The second had Sophie's.
The third had Mark's.
The final page contained one sentence.
Temporary guardianship becomes permanent upon mother's arrest.
I couldn't speak.
Mark wasn't trying to hurt Sophie.
He was trying to take her.
But why?
Officer Harris turned another page.
There was a photograph clipped behind it.
A photograph of a woman I had never seen.
Underneath her picture was written:
Biological mother.
I looked at Sophie.
May you like
Then at the photograph.
And realized there was a secret about my daughter's birth that Mark had never told me.
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